Last Days of Summer

Today’s such a nice day in NY (70s, woo hoo!), that, although I have an absolute load of work to do inside, I couldn’t resist spending at least a little of the afternoon in the park. I then realized I’d taken a bunch of pictures in Central Park and elsewhere in the city about a month ago and, because of my trip to North Carolina, hadn’t ever had time to post them:

Boaters on the pond.

Water kind of looks a bit Monet, no?

I stopped for a glass of wine in the boathouse bar and sat next to a family of tourists. After the waiter withdrew the cork from their Chardonnay bottle, the woman took it from him, wiped it gently with her napkin, and took a pen from her purse. “Mommy, what are you doing,” the little boy asked. She explained she was saving the cork, as she always does for special events. She still had the Cabernet from the night their father proposed, the Chardonnay from the first honeymoon meal, the Merlot from the family’s first trip to Disneyland, etc. all meticulously labeled and in a glass jar on the fireplace mantle. I thought it was so sweet.

By the way, the Boathouse has an excellent “house” Sauvignon Blanc. It smelled of a dewy morning meadow. I almost didn’t want to drink it…

At the fountain, a man participating in Burning Man festivities (whom I’d recognized as one of my fellow participants in the Judson Movement Research festival) giving a man and his child some bubbles to play with.

They gave me some spicy red Mardi Gras beads, which went well with my scarf.

And this is in the Mall area across from the fountain where they have that retro disco roller derby thing on weekends. This guy’s always there. I love watching.

More disco rollers, or roller-skating disco dancers, or what have you.

Is anyone else kind of annoyed by this new breed of park transportation: the rickshaw bicycle cabbies? They’re everywhere in the park; they come up speeding behind you, nearly run you over. And for the most part, the guys just sit stationary in the tourist areas, waiting to find a customer. If they’re meant as a replacement for the horse-drawn carriages, then I’m all for it (while those are quaint and all, I’ve seen more than one horse go down, especially in the heat, and I think they’re abusive to the animals), but I still see the horse ‘n buggies aligning Central Park South.

Here’s a pic of the Brooklyn Book Festival (sorry; I’m really behind on my posting – -this took place about a month ago).


And here’s Charles Bock reading from his Beautiful Children at the festival. Charles Bock was the Where’s Waldo of my book-reading-going this summer. The man was at practically every literary festival, read on his own several times, had a full-page interview or review in every newspaper… I’m very happy for him though. His book is a poignant expressionistic tale of the underbelly of “the fabulous Las Vegas,” the real Vegas. And I find him very encouraging to new authors. He always mentions how long it took him to write his novel and get it out there (10 years); that it’s all-important to get it right even if it does seem to be taking forever. Art isn’t something to be rushed. He said he revised countless times before even looking for an agent. When he finally had it down as it was meant to be, he found an agent and publisher pretty quickly. I think I’ve done the exact opposite. I started sending it out after I finished my first draft. I have an agent, but am still revising five years later… So, listen to Charles Bock. Obviously.

Here’s a picture I took sitting outside in City Hall Park at night awaiting Ofelia Loret de Mola’s site-specific dance Available Spaces, the last of the season. I get tired of writing about dance all the time, and go to far many more programs than I can review without getting seriously burned out, but here’s the NYTimes review of that. It was basically a Mexican, Halloween-style carnival. I went at night; Roslyn Sulcas, who covered it for the Times, during the day. If you’re interested, the set of photos I took of that begin here.

Okay, back to work. Happy Friday, everyone.

6 Comments

  1. Can you send some of that weather over this way? We’re suppose to have freezing low temps for like the next 4 days…

  2. Really? It’s too early for that! I don’t know what’s going on here — we had a cold spell last week and it was getting down to the 40s at night, but now it’s back up in the 70s during the day, low 60s at night. I just hope it stays for a while…

  3. Yep, Missoula MT was looking at a chance of snow this morning 🙂 It’s not suppose to be this cold… we’re about 8 degrees cooler than normal but yah it’s still cold.

  4. Ah, I envy you for living in NY. There are always a lot of thins to do, interesting people to see, etc. Over here, there’s not much going on even though the weather has been nice lately. Maybe that’s why I’m on computer all the time.

  5. Love the photos…and I LOVE NEW YORK!!!

  6. Thanks you guys! Yeah, sometimes I get annoyed (very annoyed) with all the noise, with living in such close proximity to others your neighbors basically become your roommates, and with the expense of it all, but I have to remind myself I’m not sure there’s any other city in the world with more to do…

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